1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to clothing with LED light arrays and to systems for displaying video on clothing.
2. Description of Related Art
For many years, manufacturers have sought to incorporate lights into clothing. Most commonly, the lights have been in the form of light-emitting diodes (LEDs). U.S. Pat. No. 4,774,434 to Bennion is one early example of such a design, which includes a number of LEDs arranged on a flexible substrate and encapsulated to protect them. Typically, these items of lighted clothing have been viewed as novelty items, although a few references, such as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2004/0047146 to Galoob et al., disclose lighted items of clothing that can be used as safety gear.
While the concept of integrating an LED lighting system into a piece of clothing is straightforward, its execution is not. Despite attempts over the years, almost no lighted clothing products are regularly sold, and very few products of this type have made it to market. A number of cost, engineering, and manufacturing issues have prevented most products from succeeding.
One of the major engineering issues is that clothing is very flexible and is often subjected to a great deal of wear. Thus, any electronic element embedded in a piece of clothing is subjected to wear, stresses, strains, and environmental exposure. Reliability becomes a problem; under adverse conditions, LEDs may simply “pop off” of a printed circuit board, and control electronics may stop functioning.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2011/0102304, which is incorporated by reference in its entirety herein, is the work of the present inventor and discloses LED lighting circuits for clothing that use rigid printed circuit boards. Rigid printed circuit boards may improve the survivability of the LEDs and the control electronics, but they are not necessarily ideal for the very flexible environment of clothing.
LED arrays that use flexible printed circuit boards would seem ideal for use in clothing, but engineering them to survive the clothing environment and integrating them well with clothing are difficult.